Water Park Business Booming : La Jolla Indians Cash In With a Big Splash

Tribal elder Henry Rodriguez, a feather in his shoulder-length gray hair, seems quite pleased by the sights and sounds of the screaming and shouting, the splashing and sliding, the suntanning and the sipping.

While some Indian reservations, including three in San Diego County alone, have turned--not so successfully--to bingo to make a buck, and other Indians around the United States still rely heavily on federal grants, these La Jolla Indians at the base of Palomar Mountain are making money the capitalistic way.

They’re taking out bank loans, sinking money into equipment, watching their expenses, doing some advertising and making money at the gate.

Their business is on a slide--eight of them, actually, in different configurations and levels of daring, with swimmers reaching speeds of 50 miles an hour or greater, going great guns down fiberglass tubes, riding a rush of chilling well water.

The Sengme Oaks Waterpark celebrated its first birthday over the weekend and, for the record, it’s a splashy moneymaker. The La Jolla Indians are the first Indians in the country to operate such a water park business, and now they’re getting calls from reservations all over the nation, asking for advice. It didn’t hurt local egos when Ross O. Swimmer, head of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, visited the park last month and held it up as a shining example of something going right on the reservation.

“A handout is not the way to go. We’re trying to encourage our people to go out on our own because a handout is not good for us,” said Rodriguez, the tribe’s colorful and effective spokesman. “We need to develop our own economic base. If we make mistakes, at least we can learn by them.”

Indeed, while other Indians in San Diego County and elsewhere still await promised windfall profits from high-stakes reservation bingo games, the La Jolla Indians have quietly been making money more traditionally--if not by Indian standards, at least by American businessmen’s standards.

“Operating bingo games is asking for problems,” Rodriguez said. “This is a much safer way to establish an economic base that will last for years.”

Using a federal economic development grant as seed money and a conventional $800,000 private bank loan, the Indians here have constructed a $1.25-million water recreation park that made money in its first year despite the fact it must draw customers from 30 miles or more away.

Revenue from the water slide park is running more than 30% above operating costs, and the Indians have established the credit rating they needed to expand the park into an eventual $3.5-million investment, according to Bill Essary, general manager of the facility.

“And what’s great is that the Indians generally are doing it themselves, on their own,” he said.

Essary is one of the few non-Indians employed at the water slide park and its companion 600-space La Jolla Indians Campgrounds. The facilities sit along the San Luis Rey River, at the base of Palomar Mountain along California 76, about 40 miles east of Oceanside and 60 miles north of San Diego.

None of the 600 or so enrolled members of the La Jolla band of Mission Indians had the experience to oversee construction and management of the water slide park and its annual million-dollar-plus operating budget, so outside expertise was tapped, said Rodriguez.

“You hire the best manager for the job, then you let him do his job,” said Rodriguez. In fact, the park’s first general manager was let go because of what the Indians characterized as management and construction flaws at the park. Essary, who worked for the Mariott Corp. Great America theme parks and managed three other water parks, was hired here as a business consultant 15 months ago and then was elevated to general manager.

But even Essary says he doesn’t expect to stay around for more than a year or two--by which time, he said, the local Indians will have been trained to take full control of the operation.

“I’ve seen a lot of pride in them, including some Indians who had left the reservation but who have returned and are now getting involved,” said Essary.

The water park and campground--which has been in business for about 20 years--each employ about 35 persons.

On any given summer weekend, the rustic, no-frills campground--popular for its inner-tubing rides down the river--will draw several thousand campers who pay up to $10 per campsite per night.

The water slide is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., seven days a week. Admission is $7.95 for the day (compared to many other parks which charge by the half-hour or hour, or by the ride). Admission price for children 5 to 11 is $6.95, and free for children 4 and younger or persons 65 and older). On weekends, the park reopens from 8 p.m. to midnight, catering mostly to a teen-age and young-adult crowd paying $5 per person.

Essary said weekend day attendance at the water slide park will approach 3,000 people, about one-third of them campers. The rest are day visitors who come from as far away as the South Bay and Orange County, according to surveys taken at the gate.

Last summer, the park attracted 56,000 persons over a 45-day summer season. This year, attendance is expected to top 90,000 before the daily season ends on Labor Day weekend.

Why would someone travel such distances to get to Sengme Oaks when there are water slides in La Mesa and in Orange and Los Angeles counties?

“People like the environment, the ambiance of the park and the ride to get here,” said Essary. The park’s setting--at the base of Palomar, surrounded by oak trees and with squirrels scampering about the water slides--is considerably more rustic than most such parks in Southern California.

“And we’ve got the weather on our side,” Essary said. “It can be foggy or cloudy over by the coast and we’ll have 80 degrees and blue sky out here.”

The water park features:

- “Rampage,” a new, single-person slide that starts from 30 feet up and uses a fiberglass sled. The rider drops to the bottom in two seconds at 46-degree angle and then literally skips along a level, 120-foot-long water chute until coming to a halt.

- Two side-by-side “speed slides” that are straight, 320-foot runs starting at a height of 60 feet.

- Two twisting, turning slides that make a 45-foot drop over the course of their 350-foot-long run.

- Two smaller and more gently winding slides for young children, and a straight, very wide slide for group slides.

The system relies on about 400,000 gallons of local well water, which is continuously run through six rapid sand filters.

The facility also includes a snack bar, lockers and restrooms. Guests are allowed to bring in their own food and drink, but glass containers are banned.

On the drawing board are two more attractions: a wave-making pool and an inner-tube rapids. One or the other may be built by next summer, Essary said.

More pressing work includes improving drainage of spilled water in the low grassy areas by adding gravel to the clay earth, and adding a fiberglass coating to concrete sidewalks to reduce heat and the risk of slipping. Essary said slips are common on the slick sidewalks but that not a single injury claim was filed with the park’s insurance carrier last year, either for slips or slides.

Essary and Rodriguez said they were surprised there were not more water slide parks in San Diego County (a family entertainment center in La Mesa water slides as part of a larger recreation complex). But both said they were concerned when a developer proposed building an elaborate water slide park along Interstate 15 north of Escondido. Such a park would have cut dramatically into the Sengme Oaks park’s business, but the developer backed off in the face of opposition by residents of a nearby mobile home park.

Based on the economic success of the Sengme Oaks water park, the La Jolla Indians will apparently have little trouble raising funds to finance their expansion plans.

“They are doing quite well. Their performance has exceeded what they thought would happen,” said Paul Condon, vice president of Mitsubishi Bank in San Diego, which extended the initial $800,000 loan to the tribe last year, then made another one earlier this year for more improvements at the park.

“The La Jolla Indians are doing it right,” Condon said. “They’re very knowledgeable in what they’re doing and very circumspect about their decision-making process. We have found they are a very prideful group.”